• Mood: anyone can play guitar
• Music: franz ferdinand - take me out

books, parties, films

I didn't feel much like pricing this saturday, so I (mostly) didn't, just sorted all afternoon; this pile of green viragos into literature, this heap of tattered Niven biogs into the pulp box, this 17-something or other greek-latin dictionary into the (ir)reverent hands of the classics pricer. We're looking out valentines books at the moment; I found a gloriously sentimental late Victorian anthology of love, with gold leaf decorations on the cream card cover, a Beardsley-inspired fontispiece, and red decorations throughout. Being from the era when books were sold with the pages uncut, you could tell the exciting bits from the neatness of the cutting. One particularly racy chapter had been roughly torn by (a masculine) finger; some unexciting bits hadn't been cut at all.

For anyone local (oxford) who's interested in obscure (and less obscure; I picked up a Bill Viola book) art, architecture, and design, the Oxfam Bookshop just received an enormous catalogue donation of art books. If you're around, drop in and take a look.

In the evening, I went to waistcoatmark's Film Extras party. I intended to dress as an extra from Ken Russell's tits, wits and naughty bits film Salome's Last Dance, but on rewatching, he'd shot it on a shoestring, in someone's house, with whatever mates he could get hold of that weekend. No extras; everyone had lines, even the women with dildos on sticks and their tits out. Such delight, though, to watch Glenda Jackson and Nickolas Grace bitch and pose. Instead I dug out my gold hoodie and went as "dances too hard" from 24 Hour Party People. Usually it only sees the light of day for Glastonbury (something about its punishing synthetic blend stops wind chill dead) but despite my raving about festivals to a nice lady called Hazel from the Workers Beer Collective last Thu I probably won't go this year. Again.

The party was OK. I got a bit drowsy (I'm routinely staying up til 3-4am at the moment) and maudlin and started yammering onto mr_snips about the usual shit. Sorry about that.

(On Friday after work I stumbled out of the office and into the cinema to watch Big Fish. It cheered me up a treat, Tim Burton-directed car chases and heists-gone-wrong were a joy to behold. And if it was served up with a massive side-helping of sentimental cack, it's hardly the only film out there guilty of that, at the moment. Tivo also caught the director's cut of Wild Side for me; impressive feat, given that director Donald Cammell committed suicide after the film's original release. Lesbian lust, lingering shoes, sea views and Christoper Walken with a really unfortunate haircut. Add it to the list of two-star films that live on my shelf.)

I feel like the first scene of a story, on loop.